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Booting your computer with Elive

There can be multiple reasons of why your system cannot boot your installed Elive system, but the most important is to report the bug so that if is a problem in the installer we need to fix it.

One of the reasons can be that your computer needs to boot from UEFI, version 3.0 of Elive and previous ones has not this included yet, so it’s a feature that requires 64bit builds too, but there’s still a way to make it working:

You can make your Elive to boot in case of any problem or UEFI requirement by using Super Grub2 Disk, basically this very small ISO can make it your computer to boot with any system that you have installed on it.

This can be due to multiple reasons, just make sure that Elive is correctly installed, I can also suggest to use the automated partitioning mode, which will remove all your disk contents but should take the best choices for your system.

If you still cannot boot your computer then you may have a very bad BIOS, I have seen this before and it is the reason that there was added (since the version 2.4.6) a special option in the booting of the live-mode of Elive which allows you to boot from your hard disks (from the Advanced menu of the first Boot on Live mode)

Notes about my specific experience: In my personal case seems like the bios thinks that the main disk is the secondary disk, but there’s no secondary disk at all and so the bios (the computer itself) is simply unable to start booting the disk, so using those options I just need to select “boot from my secondary disk” and it is able to boot correctly, it is of course not the best way to do it but at least this computer is able to work, suspension instead of shutdown can help too. In any case I’m 90% convinced that if he reset the bios (loading default settings didn’t worked) could make the bios read again the correct identifiers of the disks and work back, but to open the entire computer and search for the switch requires time, maybe upgrading the bios can help too, if there’s any update at all.

Pick your flavour

There’s a special key in every BIOS (when the computer first boots) that makes you able to boot from another device that is not its hard disk.

You can either enter in the bios to configure the boot order or to hit the key that selects the device to boot “only this time”, the second option is suggested.

In short, you simply need to turn ON your computer, then immediately press multiple times the F’ key that a message should tell you something like “boot menu” until a menu appears, then just select the device which you want to boot from (the one that contains Elive in your USB or DVD).

This special F’ key is normally F12 in Acer computers and ESC in the Asus ones, you can try all the F’ keys or better search which F is in a list like here, other common F’s are F10, F2, F1 and F8

Here is the list of function keys used by a manufacturer:

Acer – F2 or delete

Asus – F2, F9 or delete

Compaq – F10

Dell – F2

Emachines – tab or delete

HP – Escape, F1 or F10

Lenovo – F1 or F2

NEC – F2

Packard Bell – F1 or F2

Samsung – F2 or F10

Sharp – F2

Sony – F1, F2 or F3

Toshiba – Escape, F1, F2 or F12

If your computer uses those newer BIOS that ships with Windows 8 with the restriction to use other operating systems, you need to enter in your BIOS setup and basically:

Make sure to...

You have used the tools that we suggested to load Elive on it, most of the “bootable maker tools” changes the internal structure of the system, which is not reliable most of the time (and in very small cases it can help you to make to boot it)

Cause 1: Hardware Problem

One of the biggest causes to not be able to boot from USB is because the USB medium itself, the quality on how they are made and how internally works can affect a lot, for example there’s some memory sticks that are slower to startup, and so since the BIOS has a limited time to recognize them, if they don’t show up in the limited time the bios timeouts and skips it.

Solution

Try with various USB sticks, they are cheap, and use common trademarks

Don’t try to make the computer directly recognize and boot it, instead, pick the “Fx” option that shows up the menu to select from which device to boot from, on that way you give more time to the USB to be initialized and you make sure that the system will try to boot from it since it is meant to be listed.

Cause 2: Unrecognized Bootable formats

The correct way to boot an USB is with the “USB HDD” mode (bios), but some bioses are simply unable to read the filesytems, even if Elive uses a very compatible partition structure by putting the bootable files in a fat16 partition, some bios makes the bootable sectors not being recognized and so unable to boot the device

Solution

The solution is simple: If you used the .img files (USB images), try to use the .iso files instead (DVD images), they are built in hybrid mode so are recognized like an emulated cdrom from USB, in short:

the 90% of computers are able to boot the USB images, while the 80% of them are able to boot from the DVD ones (independently), and there’s a 30% of these problematic computers that only can boot one or the other.

Cause 3: Windows is f!#!%$$$ again...

Again another monopol tactic by microsh1t, this time was a painful play, they simply prohibited any computer to boot any system that is not theirs, with the simple excuse that is not a verified system, they called it “secure boot“, but who is the authority behind that certify’s that a system is trusted or not? them, of course, and what you need to do? just pay a good amount of money so that they can sign your files making the computer accept your system to be able to boot… And you cannot simply remove your windows or change your hard disk with a new one, because they simply implemented this in the machine itself, good play sadists…

Solution

Not all the chances are lost, fortunately by law they are simply not allowed to prohibit a computer to boot the system that the user wants. So you need to enter in special configurations to disable these options, they are not hard to do and you can just follow these 3 very simple steps from our other FAQ’s

Cause 4: Chromebooks

A Chromebook is a normally a pretty nice laptop worth of the price, unfortunately they are lock to be used only with their useless ChromeOS system, unless you are able to unlock them! but to unlock them is even a more hard task than removing the secure boot from windows (they are not good doing things even when wants to do bad), for a chromebook you even need to open it! scary huh? In any case I can tell you that it worked without problems in an Acer C720 that personally tried, a pretty nice device for its price including touchscreen and nice speakers. If you try to unlock it I don’t suggest you to try some hacks, but instead to unlock it entirely from the hardware and changing the bios.

Solution

Is better to search yourself the info in google for your specific models, but I can at least give you good articles about it:

A magical solution for old computers that cannot boot from USB...

Since the Elive 2.0 Topaz version there’s a special boot parameter that makes you to be able to boot from USB from any kind of computer in the world! promised!

It consist in a very simple trick implemented in the internal code, you just need to add to the boot options the changedevice parameter, and when the system boots, it will ask you to insert the USB, then you just need to remove the cdrom / dvd and press Enter to continue, it will continue booting then from the USB contents since it has already loaded the internal kernel and module drivers, nice trick! don’t you think? 🙂

Pick your flavour

If you need to disable UEFI boot option from the BIOS to be able to boot from USB any linux system that the windows 8 default settings don’t allow, you basically need to follow 3 simple steps:

Press Shift while you click in the icon that looks like a power button and without release it select the option that says Reboot

You will enter in a menu, select the option “Solve Problems” or “troubleshooting” and then search for UEFI settings option if you have it, or “boot options” or something similar

It will reboot your computer, then it will automatically enter in the BIOS or you need to enter on it by using the F1 or ESC key (maybe is another key in your computer, read the boot messages, it is not possible to enter in the bios if you don’t do the previous steps).

Now you just need to browse inside your BIOS settings and mark these options, they can look a bit different in every computer, some ones don’t even exists, and you need to change these settings:

disable “secure boot“

disable “UEFI mode“

enable “legacy boot“

enable “CSM“

Save the settings and reboot your computer (probably the key F10), maybe you need to run the Boot Menu in order to select the USB to boot from, check our other FAQ link for this. Some nice articles with more details:

For record the old Stable 2.0 version:

To boot the Stable 2.0 version Topaz from USB, it will not work because the structure was not made for it, but you can use a tool like unetbootin that can make it work (it modifies the bootable files), you can download our own copy of an old version that we know that it works.

Beta versions:

Use the DVD or the USB one?

For sure you should use the IMG file to record your USB’s, they includes specific and well configured partitions to boot your computer with Elive including the most reliable options, you can also create a second partition later if you want to use the rest of the disk for your data

By other side, there’s some few computers that they are unable to read the USB-HDD modes and the only way to boot from an USB is using the .ISO image instead, so you can try to use this one in case the .img fails

From Windows

With them, select the downloaded .img of Elive (for USB), pick your USB media and write it, that’s all! Be sure to follow the other instructions to make your computer to boot from USB and the common causes of possible problems.

Note: if the USB doesn’t boot in your computer you can try to write the .iso image instead of the .img one, sometimes there’s computers that doesn’t recognize the .img structures and only boots from the .iso ones (configured as hybrid to be able to boot from usb’s too)

From any Linux

From a graphical tool

Some Linux distributions has available a tool called USB-ImageWriter which is compatible with our format, you can use both the .img or the .iso images on it

From terminal (suggested)

You should use the famous ‘dd’ from a terminal, the syntax is very simple:

In more detail, you should open a terminal where the downloaded image (iso or usb) of Elive is downloaded, the “if=” will tell to use this image and the “of=” will say where to dump the image into, which is the name of the USB device where you are going to record it

Important: all the data of this device is going to be removed. Also please note that this command is very dangerous if you use a wrong device in the “of=” parameter, in other words if you say to dump it in your hard disk it will delete all your contents entirely, no matter what

You should always double-check if the “of=” is the correct device to use, you can also run “sudo gparted” to visually see the name of each device much better

From Mac

In Mac you can use too the ‘dd’ command, with the help of diskutil too:

Check the details listed for the Linux part too, the “diskutil list” line will show you where is your usb device

From Elive

In the stable versions of Elive you can already found a small graphical application to record Elive in your USB’s, much more friendly and secure, specially because only the USB devices are listed and you can see everything more graphically.

You can hit “Alt + ESC” to run the launch and type the “usb-bootable-elive” tool.

Pick your flavour

Elive Topic

No, this is a wrong idea that some people have about Elive because is a project that only progresses thanks to donations, so they are strictly needed to keep it alive, that’s why Elive required in the past of donations to install it in your computer. If you read somewhere about that Elive is a commercial distro please reference them with this to correct it. There is no enterprise or a commercial distro behind it at all. Elive is made by a single person just like Slackware and with the collaboration of a few volunteers.

Elive exists thanks in part to the non-forced donations of their users, which is used to pay services like hosting but specially the work time of his founder and developer, if the donations get better, then I’m also able to pay for extra work like what I did with PrinceAMD in the past.

But the truth is that there’s almost no money / donations coming, otherwise I would be able to pay extra work that I need, and having faster releases and better versions. You can see that by looking how I travel (but enjoying), or that I even started to try to make money by selling websites (installed on the elive server), which is something that I don’t like or enjoy.

The truth is that I could search for a job which gives me better money and a better way of living, but Elive is made from love and passion! I want to offer a better operating system to the world, and this is why I still work on it. So, the next time that you see a comment blaming Elive because it requests a voluntary donation or that it is a commercial distro, please help me to make them understand what they are saying, just like showing them this link about selling free software.

Contrary to some beliefs, Elive is not a commercial distro and has not an enterprise behind it, it is managed by a single person, which sometimes receives extra help and sometimes pays for extra services like programming.

Since more than 12 years, Elive has been supported and continued as an alive project thanks to the payment required to install (or to download, which has been in the past), unfortunately this is a need on this capitalist system and limits a lot Elive to be expanded to new horizons.

Elive is always searching ways to not force the users to pay like giving free installations in exchange to articles, an automated detection of 20 poorest country’s to not include the payment, invitation codes, etc…

So in the end, there was always a more deep desire to give it for free than make it paying, so nothing restricts you to use Elive without need to pay, and in the same time nobody forces you to use Elive, you have the choice.

Extra: If you want to live in a non-capitalist world where is not needed to pay taxes or to pay for software, make a look to the venus project, it proposes a concept similar to the open source applied to the society, a civilization without monetary system.

Installing Elive

There can be multiple reasons of why your system cannot boot your installed Elive system, but the most important is to report the bug so that if is a problem in the installer we need to fix it.

One of the reasons can be that your computer needs to boot from UEFI, version 3.0 of Elive and previous ones has not this included yet, so it’s a feature that requires 64bit builds too, but there’s still a way to make it working:

You can make your Elive to boot in case of any problem or UEFI requirement by using Super Grub2 Disk, basically this very small ISO can make it your computer to boot with any system that you have installed on it.

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My family is basically Microsoft oriented. The wife and kids have always been hesitant about experimenting with Linux, of any flavor. My youngest son (age 15) simply fell in love with Elive.
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Runaway1956
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”“

One of the best things i ever tested!!! So fast and smooth, its my dream OS. I have a P4 with 512mb and runs very fast, and i dont even installed it!!!!
Windows Vista? 1GB for optimal performance?? NOT!
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vitalf
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”“I deal with free software and OS's for about two years and I must say I was really surprised when I tested for the first time Elive, it worked better than ANY Linux distro, and was even lighter (and more beautiful) than advanced systems. This distro is awesome, you really got to test to understand.
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Felipe Magnus Gil
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”“This system is BEAUTIFUL, and the most beautiful thing is that it consumes nothing.
- Jess Luana -

”“I have traveled a lot in the selection of the adequate system, a total of 36 systems tried, and Elive is exceptionally divine
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Christian rG. ITBSW
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”“Elive is, simply put, the best operating system for new users on old computers I've ever seen! It has better performance than any other LiveCD I've ever seen!
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William W.
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I don't know what specifically you did, but I tried 10 different linux systems prior to attempting Elive and is the first time that my external hard disk was recognized correctly. I love you guys for it. You saved all my data! Thanks!
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jxn
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”“

Thanks for give a new usage to my old laptop, I tried other systems and Elive works wonderfully in my Pentium II
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Guipabo
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When I first tried Elive I was skeptical. I was used to Ubuntu and Suse. However when I first installed Elive on an old computer, I loved its look and feel. Surprisingly it was an easy to use interface. I immediately installed it on my PC and it works great!
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Colin
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I wanted to try Elive for its stability, I don't wanted to continue installing new versions each 6 months or to use minimalistic systems which lacks features or applications. With Elive I found my perfect system for my computer.
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Antonio Bazán Sánchez
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I spend a lot of time in front of my computer, tired of windows, i was looking for a user experience that bring me far away from the Gnome or KDE one. Truly, elive responds to all my needs.
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Dader
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With Elive I can do everything that I need: internet, multimedia, work. Grazie
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Urdnaxela
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I needed a Linux distro for my Compaq v2000 as Win XP took too long to do anything. Elive fits the bill. My computer now has a new life and is very snappy now. Great job!
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RJMenard
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”“It's simply the best and most beautiful operating system that i ever used.
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Cédric BLONDEAU
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This is one of the only "different" distros that is also fully featured and ready to use out of the box (you know what I mean....) elive Gem also works with my wireless card that isn't supported with UBUNTU anymore (typing from elive now). Its all looking very good!!
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Michael j-king
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Elive 2.0 is a very good Linux system. I am very happy to use it for my work and for my PhD in Aerospace Eng! I don't want to change with Ubuntu or another distro and I have all the applications for my studies. This is for me Linux!
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Corrado
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”“I have worked with a lot of operating systems, to say that Elive is an exceptional work is not enough, good job!
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Enrique Fröhlich
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”“This is so far the most advanced Linux system that I know, I decided to work with it because is so powerful, little need of resources and extraordinary design. Is pure art.
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Antonio
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To the creators behind this awesome distro, please allow me to congratulate you and give you my thanks, for creating this unique piece of software.
Elive is fast, super fast, freaking fast, is a gem.
Thank you!!!!!
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Joe101
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Elive adds a refreshing look to what ever pc it runs on. It's component parts work well and installation is a breeze. The live disc includes more than just the essentials, having a broad range of desktop applications elive is a fast lane into modern media editing and recreation.
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Andy Page
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”“I first tried Elive in an old computer and I was surprised how fast it worked, but later I bring it on my school and I was surprised by the visual effects and how nice they worked.
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Sebastián Zambrano
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Some distros are set up like a house decorated for it's cover shot and photo spread. Elive is like a home that someone lives in. Users will discover the many subtle details only after living with Elive for a while.
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Eight bit al
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I tried this system and it saved me from trash an old computer, highly recommended
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Alejandro
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”“If everything worked as well as Elive, there would be no more problems on earth !
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Gilles
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I'd just like to say a big thank-you to the developers who put together one of the nicest user experiences I've ever come across.
- The Leander -

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Elive has been installed on my PC for several months now. Everything works, it's fast and intuitive.
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Blighty
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”“Elive has exceeded my expectations, is fast, robust, simple, intuitive, easy, and also elegant. Based in Debian and polished in every detail, its a fantastic dreamed experience for every user since the installation.
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Walter Bob
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When I first looked at Elive I thought it looked very interesting, but I did not realize what a surprise I was in for! This Beautiful OS astounded me! I had no words for it! It competes with the likes of any other system I have ever used, And I have used every other popular OS's out there today!
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Daniel Lapain
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I must admit, I tried many linux and was about to give up, the problems about drivers, bugs, freezing so on, but I heard about Elive, I though I might as well give linux another chance, and I am glad I did! Its the only OS i need, and the only one I want :) Thank you, I am glad I donated, it was worth it.
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Masterizaak
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Today I can tell you that there's a linux system that is really intuitive, beautiful and powerful, just like the author's says it is art, this wonder is called Elive 2.0
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Ruben Velasco Jaimes
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Elive is (by far!) the most RAM efficient and less resources consumption system that I have ever used!
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Ruben Bilbao
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Elive saved my PC, it is now running like new and with lots of features. Everything works straight out of the box and is elegant and easy to use. Thank you Elive!!! You deserve much more recognition!
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Thomas
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I waited a long time for this. a Linux project to get renewed older hardware with a good desktop experience. Thanks to this i use an old laptop with great satisfaction for general purposes.
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Joe101
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Truly a very nice system, simple and powerful, able to satisfy the most demanding user. Congratulations!
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Ruben Velasco
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I have just installed the stable release and I completely love elive!!
It's fast, responsive and very very pretty!!
I will recommend this Linux flavour to all friends and family.
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Jorge Gascón Pérez
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Hi, I Just want to say that this is the first software that I wanted to donate for :)
Thank you very much!
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Luliu
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I've been using Linux for a few months now. As every newbie I have installed and toyed with many distros in that time and Elive is the only one that I've always keep in my machine.
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Ruben Bilbao
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Elive is definitely a system that goes beyond the barriers of creativity in the software industry with great flexibility and highly intuitive interface
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Argel
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”“I have been considering Elive for quite some time. I have tried a lot of linux distros and always come back to Elive. The user interface is stunning. The functionality is exceptional. This is the OS that is convincing me to switch from Windows. Great job guys!
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JP Blanc
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”“It is the best and fastest linux distribution, combining speed, functionality and appearance on a perfect way.
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Marcelo
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Elive will be the choice of present generation.
- Srikar -

”“Thank you for making Elive a Linux distribution that is just a pure joy to use. Best damn Linux so far I have used, and believe me I have used many of them only to be frustrated at well a lack of working right. I look forward to keeping up with what is going on.
- Jon Valentine -

”“Elive was the only way to convince my childrens to use Linux, from all the other systems that I have tried they prefered to use Windows XP. Now they are fans of Elive! (Note: they have 5, 7 and 9 years old). Excellent work, Congratulations!
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Fito
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”“With Elive I was able to revive an old PC I had, give the functions that I never thought possible in a totally efficient way. Elive is a fully recommended amazing system.
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Gecko
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